“Yes, Mr Macdougall, it’s me,” said I. “Do you feel better now?”
But he did not answer me for a moment, although I felt a tremble go through his frame.
A moment afterwards, with what sounded like a sob, he cried out, “You brave laddie! To theenk that you of all ithers should ha’ coom to save a reckless loon lik’ me, the noo! It’s a joogement on me for me cruel leeing again’ you, boy; you’ve heapit coals o’ fire on me head!”
“Never mind that now, Mr Macdougall,” I said. “We’ve got to see about getting back to the ship, and then we can let bygones be bygones! Have you got your breath back now?”
“Eh?”
“Do you think you can manage to put a hand on my shoulder, and rest quiet in the water while I tow you along?”
“Aye, I’ll try it, laddie.”
“Mind, you mustn’t clutch hold of me too hard,” I cried; and, easying him off from my chest, I turned round again in the water.
He sank about a foot at first from the change of position, but, keeping strict heed to my injunctions, and gripping my shoulder with a grasp of iron, he was presently floating half alongside and half behind, with his head well out of the water, as I struck out to where I could still see the ship as we rose every now and then at intervals on the crests of the following waves; although, when we descended again between the intervening hollows, we seemed shut in by a wall of sea.
The pampero having blown off from the pampas inland—whence the local name for these tornadoes—had come from the westwards, and, of course, the set of the waves, even after the wind had ceased to move them, continued in a south-westerly direction, whither the Esmeralda had also been carried away from us, the exposed surface of her hull drifting her more rapidly away than such tiny atoms as we presented to the influence of the rollers. When, therefore, Mr Macdougall was so far recovered as to permit of my attempting to regain the ship, she was already quite a mile off, if not more!